The Battle of the Sexes Movie Review

The Catbird Seat is treasured by James Thurber fans for taking the sort of teethgnashing experience everyone dreads and discovering an ingenious way out of it. Mr. Martin (Peter Sellers) is a quiet Edinburgh accountant for Mr. Macpherson's (Robert Morley) textile company. He wishes to be left alone and he certainly leaves everyone else alone. That is, until Angela Barrows (Constance Cummings) arrives on the job. Mrs. Barrows (there's no polite way to say this) is an…American efficiency expert. She has the effect on shy Mr. Martin of a new piece of chalk S-C-R-E-E-C-H-I-N-G against a chalk board. She's loud. She has her own, very definite agenda. She lives in her own world. Regrettably, that world happens to be Mr. Martin's world, too, and he was here first! Mr. Martin is very unhappy. But then he realizes there is a solution in sight; he decides there's nothing for it but to murder Mrs. Barrows. What happens next is the stuff of which classic British comedies are made. Director Charles Crichton skillfully escalates the war of nerves between Mrs. Barrows and old Mr. Martin (Cummings was 49 and Sellers was 34, but he'd specialized in playing elderly characters for years). The character actors are first rate; Ernest Thesiger is Mr. Macpherson, Senior (right!) and Michael Goodliffe is charmingly dry as a detective.

1960 88m/B GB Peter Sellers, Robert Morley, Constance Cummings, Jameson Clark, Ernest Thesiger, Donald Pleasence, Moultrie Kelsall, Alex Mackenzie, Roddy McMillan, Michael Goodliffe, Norman MacOwen, William Mervyn, Sam Wanamaker; D: Charles Crichton; W: Monja Danischewsky; C: Freddie Francis; M: Stanley Black. VHS